


Our Forbidden Worlds

by LadyKadilion



Category: The Strain (TV), The Strain Trilogy - Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan
Genre: F/M, Mythology References, Plot, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2018-12-18 21:50:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11883537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKadilion/pseuds/LadyKadilion
Summary: Humans have always been blind to the truth, condemned to live in only a portion of the known world. But Quintus Sertorius is not one of them, and that's what makes all the difference.





	1. 1.1 | Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> ****  
> _Disclaimer:_  
>   
>  _All recognized characters and other type of reference to the canon is property of their respective owner. All characters and original elements are property of the author of this story. This is a fanwork for fans. No copyright infringement is intended._  
> 
> [TUMBLR](http://www.quintustheinvictus.tumblr.com) ★ [TWITTER](http:///www.twitter.com/alexologyart) ★ [INSTAGRAM](http://www.instagram.com/alexology.art) 
> 
> This story is now posted on the Tumblr blog [Our Forbidden Worlds](http://www.ourforbiddenworlds.tumblr.com). My Strain blog is [QuintusTheInvictus](http://quintustheinvictus.tumblr.com)
> 
> I have written fanfiction before, but this one is my first about The Strain Universe, thanks for reading it and I hope you all enjoy the trip. Feedback is always welcome! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧

 

**Part 1**

> _“Sit down, proud, empty, hollow things that you are! Let this remind you why you once feared the dark…”  
>  _
> 
> _**Prince Nuada, Hellboy: The Golden Army** _

Fatigue was not something she felt regularly. Feeling tired was one of the things she detested most.  It clouded her mind and produced a state of constant frustration, something she could not control, especially when her mind remained active but her body did not obey as she wanted.

But that day, when exhaustion finally attacked her body, she preferred to let herself be carried away by drowsiness and to burrow under the thick blankets and soft sheets of her bed, surrendering to the calm and silence.

The curtains of her apartment were closed, as to not let the sunlight pass, which gradually began to set in the distant horizon, giving way to the darkness of the night. There was no one else in the room, she thought, watching the luminous numbers of the clock on her bedside table.

**_08:00 pm_ **

Her perception of the world around her had always been her greatest gift and her worst curse. Everything seemed to emit its own individual noise and within her head became a continuous vibration, an incessant hum that she usually pushed to the darkest corner of her mind.

But in the security of her little room there was nothing more... she thought as her heavy eyelids closed, forcing herself to no longer worry about whatever was wreaking havoc on her mind but the murmur inside her brain was unbearable.

She breathed calmly. There was no pain, hunger, or cold between the sheets of her bed, far from the chaos of the outside world. In this dark and sheltered place she could let herself be carried away without the need to experience the overwhelming world around her. It was her Fortress.

In that place, inside that dark and messy room with small windows, belonging to an apartment on the fourth floor of an old industrial district building, she decided to let herself be carried away by overwhelming fatigue. With the phone unplugged and the door locked, nobody would bother her.

She felt peace. She felt safe.

But inside the complex web of her consciousness, she was _running._

_"The mind is a strange place." The male voice rumbled inside her skull, while her sleeping figure stirred uncomfortably beneath the sheets. "It is composed of our greatest desires, our deepest secrets, and also our darkest fears. There are things that not even the most intelligent of the living beings in this world would understand, which appear before us as confused dreams, marveling and even frightening with their surrealism..."_

_"But how to differentiate a dream created by our subconscious, a signal, or even a message?"_

_"A message?"_

_"Tell me,[solnyshko](https://translate.google.com/#ru/en/solnyshko), have you ever felt that what you are seeing in your dreams is not just the product of your mind?"_

_She was running... **fast.**_

Behind was the familiar tranquility of that room, and the distant noise of New York's bustling streets faded into the distance, until the only sound she could hear were her quick footsteps on the stony ground of the forest, and the continual pounding of her blood against her ears, a hammer that drove her crazy.

_The forest._

_**That damned forest.** _

She ran without stopping to look back, desperate to get out of the dark entrails of that forest as she stumbled over fallen logs, bruising and wounding her bare feet with sharp stones which sunk into the accumulated snow, without remembering very well of what she was fleeing so desperately.

She stumbled on a rocky slope, sliding over the snow and mud, falling fully to her knees, scraping the palms of her hands as she hit the ground. Her breathing was agitated, and the icy air in her lungs burned her aching chest.

She knew she should not be scared, because it was only a dream, even though some of it was based on a memory, buried deep in her consciousness. No, she should not be afraid, but even so, a disturbing feeling began to fill her senses. A hum... a buzzing began to cause chaos inside her head, clouding her judgment and bristling her skin, wrapping her with a coldness more intense than the snow that was falling over her hunched trembling figure.

The wooded expanse spread in all directions. The evergreen trees stretched their shadows over her head, rising into a dark sky where the full moon was clearly trimmed, covering the white snow in front of her with its silvery glow. But the darkness at her back was deeper, and it seemed to exhale, emitting a cold breath that prickled the hairs on the back of her neck. The light of the moon could not pierce that place, and she felt an inexplicable fear rise in her stomach.

_“The moon is very bright, but I cannot see anything there. Why?”_

A strange feeling of deja vu overwhelmed her, and though she repeated over and over again that nothing would happen, that there was no chance that something would hurt her in that strange place, her apprehension only grew. The cold, the darkness of the night behind her, the wet mud, and even the snow in contact with her bare skin... all seemed far too real.

Panic began to bubble inside her, and she needed all her self-control so she would not run away in terror from this imaginary danger.

 _"Focus."_ She stood up and wiped her scratched hands on her pajama bottoms. _"It's just a dream, you're still in your bed, the cold is your imagination... everything here is your imagination. **Nothing can hurt you."**_

She forced herself to walk, ignoring the pain of her numb feet from the snow, and the burning of her lungs exposed to the cold, still tired from her desperate race to nowhere. Her body was trembling visibly, and she hugged herself in vain, trying to shield her body from the relentless climate. She still had the thin sleeveless shirt she wore to bed, and her skin was exposed to the snowflakes that were falling around her. Even her tangled hair, which she had let loose before going to sleep, was partially covered with a thin layer of snow.

She could see a clearing in front of her, which glowed ghostly under the intense light of the moon. Without considering a logical explanation for her actions, she walked toward the center of it, dodging another fallen tree, although the rational side of her mind shouted that she should seek refuge and hide from what was _**hunting her.**_

 _"Hunting me? There is nothing following me, this is a dream, I will wake up in my bed at any moment."_ But there was a part of her, deep inside, that did not seem to want to be convinced by that statement.

The growing bed of snow now wrapped around her knees, preventing her from advancing, causing her to drag her feet along the damp ground hidden underneath. Everything was so bright around her that she had to close her eyes slightly, wondering what caused that phenomenon if it was only a few hours to midnight.

Her whole body felt numb, and she did not know if it was because she was already sleeping, or due to the intense cold that was relentlessly attacking her.  She needed to get to the other side of the clearing quickly.  The snow was falling harder and the trees creaked around her in the sudden wind. She was beginning to panic once more, feeding the sensation of fear and anguish within her chest.   It grew in intensity, emitting a heat she had not experienced before.

She hated feeling this way, afraid to be stalked by a nonexistent force, vulnerable to something she could not identify. She had no control over it.

Her breath swirled in front of her in a cloud of glittering crystals, and as she reached the center of the clearing she gasped for the effort to keep herself balanced in that cold wet sea of snow. She had the impression that the forest itself did not want her to go any further, eating her alive with its elements.

_"Just a little more... you have to cross **before him."**_

She stopped, confused by the command her brain had given. She took a deep breath, wet due to the snow and half dead from the cold, not daring to look back.

_"There is no one else here but me ... please let there be no one else."_

But even when she refused to think about it, she forced herself to believe that everything was in her imagination, but the feeling that followed was absolute fear and terror, accompanied by a haunting presentiment that froze her to the bones, already cold and numb.

Trembling, covered in snow, buried to the knees, disarmed and with the ghostly full moon as the only source of illumination in the midst of that endless forest, she wondered what kind of meaning could it all have.  But before moving forward, a subtle purr behind her, followed by a low grunt, answered her question.

She did not need to turn around to listen... she felt the presence behind her. The horrible certainty that something that was not a product of her imagination was following her settled into her thoughts, and along with it, the horrible feeling that it had been stalking her for a long time, long before she fell into that dream-like trance.

She did not need to turn her head completely to catch a glimpse of the pair of red eyes watching her from the darkness, two brilliant crimson fires, the only pinch of color in the middle of that sea of impenetrable blackness.

And then she remembered _why she'd been running._

She leapt forward, her heart pounding wildly inside her chest, and a new overwhelming force burned her veins, giving back some of the heat she'd lost. She was terrified but at the same time wanted to survive, and that was the switch she needed to escape from the creature’s claws.

So she fled once more, before the cold and the fear could paralyze her limbs completely, leaving her at the mercy of the beast. The creature moved with her too, entering the clearing, and she watched, horrified, as the darkness seemed to swallow the bright light of the moon.

Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion due to the action of the adrenaline. The pain in her muscles was nothing compared to the fervent need to save her life. And the creature lost no time in following her, dragging the darkness in its wake, like a demon coming out of the bowels of hell, only its blood-red eyes were visible in that impenetrable darkness, nailed to the trembling woman's back like arrows cutting the distance to their target.

She cursed herself for her stupidity, as her gasps became harder and she almost fell once more over the snow that was now covering her waist. She was exposed and didn’t seek refuge, no... _she had left herself exposed to the beast_ in a clearing to the powerful moonlight, and now she had to run for her life.

The hum inside her head increased in intensity as she gasped again, controlling the urge to bring her hands to her temples due to the growing migraine. It was a low murmur, like having two hundred voices talking at the same time inside her skull.

The snow was a big problem, it made her slip and lose her balance every time she made the futile attempt to get out of that place, she needed a handle to help herself, and desperately looked up, looking for some nearby branch to use as leverage. Behind her, the creature seemed to have no difficulty cutting the snow accumulated with its own body, dragging the darkness in its wake.

She gripped the lower branch of a nearby tree with both hands, the texture blistering her skin, but she ignored the pain as she used all the strength of her arms to lift the weight of her body and dig out of that icy ocean around her. She swung her body forward, propelling herself and falling with a hard impact into a less covered area. Her ankles and calves resented the fall, but she stood up with shaking legs, taking a deep breath of the cool night air before she continued her flight.

The fire that the adrenaline had ignited inside her began to fade and the buzz inside her head pierced her brain painfully, pressing the sides of her temples and clouding her vision momentarily. She put her hands to her forehead, and she could feel the blood flowing from her injured palms, soaking the cold skin of her face with its warmth, but the blood froze at the contact of the icy air, like her breath in a cloud of frosted crystals. Her body began to lose strength from the pain, as she ran terrified through the trees. The moonlight no longer illuminated her way, and the creature ran after her at a speed she knew she was not going to be able to escape.

He stretched his long, cadaverous fingers toward her, clawing toward her skin before he even touched her, and her mind screamed over the deafening murmur of those two hundred voices. The world around her seemed to collapse in on itself, as everything disintegrated and transfigured in front of her. The trees were now just shadows stretching their imposing figure toward the night sky.  The snow turned into a constant wind, and the ground spun at an impossible angle, and the woman, caught in a sudden moment of intense fear, fell away with it.

The impact on the hard ground caused the air to rush out of her lungs, losing her breath while lying on her back.  She was paralyzed for a few moments as the world around her stabilized again. She rolled over and controlled the urge to vomit, trying to observe where she had fallen, disoriented and feeling a horrible pain in her whole body.

_“Oh god, what the hell was that?”_

Everything was completely covered with absolute darkness, the frozen snow no longer falling from the night sky or the coldness consuming her numbed body, she was no longer in the endless forest and the full moon was no longer illuminating her with its silvery glow. For a moment she thought she was on the floor of her bedroom, having rolled out of her bed while the nightmare attacked her senses, but the surface beneath her hands was soft to the touch, a carpet belonging to a long corridor. And when she looked up she saw that it was flanked on both sides by a long row of identical seats.

Her senses seemed to be blunted by the impact. She decided to lie on her stomach, careful not to make much noise, as she struggled to regulate her breathing to a more rhythmic pace. She tried to listen for anything, or even pierce the prevailing darkness by sharpening her sight. Soon she realized that she was not alone.

As her eyes began to get acclimated to the dim light inside this strange place, she observed it from her position face down on the ground, and while she did, a shiver ran through her body. The rows of seats on either side of her were not empty.  The silhouettes of the sleeping people were softly drawn into the reigning darkness, but all of them were quiet and silent, showing no sign of being disturbed by her sudden arrival, they were all seemingly caught in a dream too deep to even care for the new presence of the woman, but something warned her there was more to it than that.

It was too quiet.  She noticed it from the moment she arrived, but  had not paid any attention to it until her senses returned to normal. She managed to get to her feet, feeling her whole body protesting the movement, and for a few minutes she only watched the row of seats and the people who were there.

_“A train?”_

The woman noticed the area around her. The ceiling was low and vaulted, and when she got to her feet she almost brushed her head against the compartments that were just above the sleeping passengers. The seats were comfortable, and the windows were small and rounded, with sliding blinds, all lowered now. She approached one of the only empty seats, reaching out and opening the closed blind of one of the windows, careful not to make too much noise. The artificial light that shone on the outside barely penetrated into the darkness of the cabin, but it allowed her to see clearly a large expanse of deserted space and concrete floor, the enormous height to which they were.  The silhouette of a tower with flickering lights in the distance.

_**“A plane.”** _

She watched their faces in the darkness, walking cautiously on the soft carpet without making a sound. They were men and women, old and young, seated next to each other, calm and without any sign of violence or disturbance in their expressions.  Some of them still with their cell phones or other electronic devices in their hands or resting on their laps ... but they did not seem to notice the woman watching them carefully as she walked passed, taking care not to touch them. Each had the same apparent state of unconsciousness, as if a spell had fallen on their bodies and plunged them into the deepest of dreams.

_“Do not touch them, you don’t know what is going on. Just watch.”_

An uneasiness began to take form inside her chest, growing slowly as she reached the end of that long corridor, still watching the sleeping figures sitting in silence, showing no sign that they were going to to wake up. They lay unconscious, their heads resting on the backs of their seats, too quiet, and in a deep part inside her head she knew that something was wrong, she was missing something essential.

The atmosphere in that place was cold, but not as it had been in the forest she had come from, yet her skin seemed to react to the difference in temperature and she rubbed her bare arms unconsciously.

She tried to listen once more, forcing her senses beyond the countless numbers of seats and people around her, fighting the headache she was feeling, and trying to pierce the strange sensation that invaded her consciousness and turned off her perception.

Anxiety began to mount inside her chest. Her head was spinning uncontrollably and the rational part of her brain seemed to be trying to pull down the smoky curtain that numbed her. She put her hand on one of the seats, while the nausea overwhelmed her again.

She looked once more at the faces of the people around her, blinking rapidly as the state of confusion began to collapse, and now she could see every detail of their calm faces, their bodies like statues. At first she had thought it was because she was in a dream, and that all her senses were turned off because of the dreamlike confusion that her subconscious was creating around her, but now that her head began to slowly stabilize, and her perception seemed to come alive again in that strange place, the horror replaced the anxiety when her ears could not catch anything but the rapid pounding of her own heart, and her other sense could not perceive anything but absolute silence.

_Silence._

Something clicked in her brain as the gears began to work once more. There was too much silence, and that disturbed her greatly.

Because there was nothing else.

No sound came from the people sleeping around her, no noise, movement, or even the familiar _murmur_ inside her head.

_“Oh God.”_

They were not asleep.

_“Oh God no.”_

**They were dead.**

She stumbled as she backed down the aisle, her eyes never leaving the marbled faces around her. How did she not realize it before? How could she have missed something so important? All of this was too real to be just a dream, but even the irrational part inside her (of which she always felt ashamed) did not want to accept such a horrible thought. Crossing the separation curtains that seemed to wrap her body when she hit them, she ran into the same scene, again and again: hundreds of bodies sitting in their seats, lifeless, and a sepulchral silence that invaded it all.

_“What the hell happened here?”_

This was not a dream.

The terror, the nausea, and the adrenaline running through her veins were too real, and with every passing minute, her senses seemed to come to life. She stumbled clumsily into something metallic and cursed under her breath, realizing that she had arrived in a room wider and devoid of seats, but unlike the passenger cabin, where she could glimpse a vestige of light, this place was in complete darkness.

She tried to reach for anything in front of her as she walked blindly, hoping to find something to grasp so it could guide her way. Her eyes still could not penetrate the darkness, and she feared she might collide with whatever had crossed her path. She felt the cold metal surface of the plane's cart, pushing it forward, waiting for it to hit the wall at the end of the room, but the sound that followed the creaking of the little wheels sliding down the carpet was enough to make her heart leap into her throat, cutting off her breath completely.

The object hit something in its path, stopping the rhythmic chirp of the wheels, and then a thunderous metallic noise broke the silence. It raised the hairs on her arms and caused her to retreat instinctively until her back was against the wall. The cold material that covered the cabin sticking to her sweaty skin.

It was only a few seconds of noise, which rumbled against the walls of the room and into her skull, furthering the headache that had returned. Around her things were becoming clearer and she could now hear more clearly, her senses began to intensify, leaving behind that veil that had blunted her perceptions, but also gave way to the cold of the environment, accompanied of a nauseating and piercing odor, that stung her eyes.

Still with her back against the wall, and breathing as calmly as her lungs allowed her, she slowly approached the source of the noise, dragging her bare feet and trying to feel with the tip of her toes the change in the surface of the floor.

She felt the carpet as she walked without looking, until she came upon the hard, cold surface of something that felt like a metal door, unlike the floor of the passenger cabin. And then, emptiness.

She breathed. _The cargo compartment._ Her mind worked tirelessly, trying to rationalize in the middle of her panic.

_“The cargo compartment is open, so the noise, the cart dropped into the cargo compartment.”_

_“The cargo compartment is open.”_

The smell that flooded the small room was stronger in that place, and its intensity gave her a strange sense of _deja vu_. Something in her head told her she must remember the odor from somewhere, maybe her chemistry classes? She had not been good at science, but some chemical compound that evaporates into the air could explain the state of the plane's passengers. Wouldn't it be dangerous for her to inhale it also?

She tried to push away the veil of uncertainty that had invaded her mind, trying to focus on the present once more.

No. She was not there anyway.

Well, she was there... but not in _that way._

She knelt to the floor with heart pounding, touching with trembling hands the edge of that dark abyss. Her eyes had already become accustomed to the lack of light, being able to see the dimensions of the square door on the floor in front of her, but below, in the entrails of the enormous machine of more than 200 feet in length, and with capacity to carry almost 300 living souls on board, there was only impenetrable darkness.

_“Why is it open?”_

A part of her mind, the most rational part, the one that often warned her of danger, told her that she must quickly withdraw from that place, even hide, and wait for that strange episode to end, in order to return to her bed and the security of the four walls of her apartment. But another part of her mind, that part that usually governed her most impulsive decisions, whose consequences had governed much of her life, begged her with overwhelming force to lean toward the compartment’s opening, into the darkness. She needed to get more clues about what had happened there, and her mind told her that everything she should know was in there.

When two red orbs shone in the darkness several meters below her, she recoiled with such a strong impulse that her back hit the wall where she had been reclined minutes before.

_“No._ _Oh no, no, no...”_

She gasped heavily at the impact, but the pain in her muscles was nothing like the pain inside her head. She managed to hear the sound of something slipping into the darkness of the cargo compartment, a strange purr accompanied by the blink of those strange blood-red orbs, but the buzzing inside her head was too painful to be able to focus on anything but retreat blindly to the cabin full of corpses, gripping her skull with both shaking hands. Gasping for the effort to block the turbulent intrusion whose consequences, she was sure would not differ from the hundreds of souls lying dead around her.

She screamed, holding her head firmly in both hands as she struggled to escape that intrusion, mentally and physically, backing and crashing into one of the seats, almost falling on the lap of one of the motionless passengers, a little girl watching her with huge eyes open, devoid of life.

_“Oh God… FOCUS!”_

She screamed in the midst of an intense episode of panic, and her despair grew as she could not hear her own cries in the great _hum_ that vibrated incessantly inside her mind. She knew that if this continued her consciousness would be crushed under the enormous weight of her attacker's mind.

_“Focus! Block the damn attack, block the shit out of it!”_

She stopped in the middle of the corridor, one knee on the floor and her hands still over her ears. Her gasps whimpered with pain, hyperventilating harshly.

She remembered those eyes now, in that damned snowy forest, so long ago, she had dreamed about that night again. She also remembered the _hum_ she had felt fluttering over the surface of her psyche, and the sensation it had produced at the edges of her perception. It had not been so strong back then, intrusive yes, but not so strong and so wild, _determined to kill._

The first wall gave her a few seconds to catch her breath, but it was knocked down under the weight of the adversary like a blade cutting through softened butter. She hardened her jaw and gnashed her aching teeth, resting both knees on the floor and her right hand on one of the armchairs that was at her side.

Her hand touched a soft object. She grasped it without thinking twice, opening her mouth with effort because of the tension in her muscles, and closing her teeth on the rectangular object, biting with all her strength. _A wallet_ , she thought, feeling the taste of leather flood her mouth.

_“One more time.”_

The wall she used to shield her mind did not collapse immediately, and she pushed her own psyche against it, expanding it forward, feeling the resistance and the sharp edges of the strange and invasive consciousness, which vigorously attacked her when the creature noticed the new obstacle. Before he could tear down that wall, he had to cross the defensive expanse of her own psyche and the new wall she had built to replace the one that was now crumbling.

For a moment she wondered why he did not attack her physically, why he took refuge in the darkness and had chosen this method to incapacitate her, or even kill her, as she was now sure the creature had done with all the passengers on that plane. Her psyche weakened for a moment because of her incessant questions, which allowed the creature to pierce it like a battering ram, striking against the third wall with an overwhelming force.

_“Shit.”_

She repeated the process, her eyes clouded, her jaw and all the muscles of her body aching, and her brain a mess. The passengers should have experienced only a few seconds of horrible agony before perishing under the crushing weight that had shattered their fragile brain activity.

 _“I am not them.”_ She thought as she felt the third wall begin to fall apart, while she expanded the force of her psyche against the intrusion, fighting against the invading enemy. And in fact that was all of this, a clash of opposing forces, and in the end she would lose sooner or later due to mental fatigue.

Above the hum of the attack and her labored breathing, she perceived a strange, non-offensive force, a murmur, almost like a voice, which purred around the edges of her mind. The force of the intrusive mind relaxed for a moment, while her walls remained waiting, alert to a new attack. She kept her eyes closed and when she opened them, fear paralyzed her.

The creature with bright red eyes stared at her, only a few feet away, hidden in the shadows of the cabin. Had he been there all that time?

She needed to run away from the creature like she did in the snowy forest, but she was paralyzed on the floor and her legs did not obey her.

She remained kneeling and paralyzed, the wallet still between her teeth, catching her breath and trembling with fear. She felt a desperate need to wake up, to run, to hide from those deep red eyes. But the creature remained in his place, watching her, and she felt the force of the beast's mind retreat slowly over the ramshackle remains of her own, but the hum remained there, scratching at her conscience.

The purring, this time, was outside her mind. The creature advanced slowly, flooding the passenger cabin with that horrible smell, which now she could now identify as the acid and nauseating smell of ammonia, but she could not see him well in that darkness, rather than a large shadow that flooded everything and in whose depths two crimson orbs shone clearly. The creature gave a low growl, and as her mind heard began to buzz again, she realized, it was looking for a door to enter.

_“No.”_

An inhalation; an exhalation. The creature tried once more, she knew he wanted to talk, communicate within her mental defenses, intimidate her with his psychic strength. She could perceive the curiosity in the creature's mind, but also the frustration. He had wanted to kill her easily, but he had not been able to do it, not like he did with the people around her.

A new attempt, the same answer.

_“NO.”_

He went a step further, but when she got to her feet, the creature stopped. She knew he could not hurt her there, she was not physically in that place, and despite being able to touch things and perceive physical aspects of that reality, if he wanted to hurt her, it would not cause damage to her physical body, _right?_

She remembered something about her past, but she pushed the memory away quickly, trying to calm herself for a moment as she kept the walls of her mind alert to another clash of the creature who still watched her from the shadows. Opening her mouth, she dropped the wallet, and it fell to her feet with a thud.

She was far away from that place, and her body was nothing more than the projection of her own being, her own mind, _he could not hurt her._

_“You know that's not true, there are other ways that he can hurt you.”_

As she struggled with her fears and doubts, the creature watched her strangely. Evidently he had not expected her presence, and curiosity was more due to surprise than anything else, and she wondered briefly what would happen to her if she did not wake up quickly.

A laugh was followed by a hiss and a flicker of those red eyes like incandescent embers in the dark. She frowned and made a gesture to speak, to say something, but what followed that action made her stop, at the same time she feel her blood freeze in her veins and a sense of horror paralyzed her to the core.

_**“Are you lost, creature? Why are you afraid of me? Why do not you let me in, so I could help you?”** _

_“Oh God.”_

_**“You know it's useless to fight against me, you'll lose, sooner or later...”** _

_“No, oh please. NO.”_

She was prepared for the attacks and thrust of that strange consciousness into her own, but hearing that voice in her head, that strange purr invading her mind, violating her defenses, caused in her a shock so strong that she could not do anything more than to watch those strange red orbs as he spoke inside her head.

_**“Humans… They have always believed that they are the most powerful beings, but it’s time for them to embrace defeat.”** _

She closed her eyes tightly, trying to lift the walls, trying to push the mental force of that beast out of her head, that psychic intrusion that was playing with her mind, exploring her consciousness. She blocked his progress, but his words kept echoing inside her skull, clucking with amusement as he spoke.

_**“Sooner or later, everyone will meet defeat against me.”** _

This time, when the exploratory hum brushed the edges of her mind, she pushed the intrusive force so hard that she finally managed to block his attack and seal the doors of her own mind, shielding her and feeling how she was free of all consciousness alien to her own. Her action was motivated by rage, the only force that was more powerful than her fatigue and pain, as she watched the creature approach once more.

_**“Have you come here to destroy me?”** _

_“Get out of my mind… GO AWAY AND LET ME GO!”_

_**“You cannot win, foolish thing!  I'm the drinker of men... The Devourer of Souls.”** _

While he spoke, his shadow was enveloping her, rising above her, touching the ceiling of the cabin that was beginning to blur before her eyes. In her desperation and fury, she pushed her own mind, feeling a heat flooding her head, along with a gushing pain due to the intense force to thrust, push forward, perforate the barrier that her enemy had left down to communicate with her... And in the midst of her blurred vision, she saw the creature's eyes grow with surprise.

[ _“Moya golova moya, ty, sukin syn!”_ ](https://translate.google.com/#ru/en/Moya%20golova%20moya%2C%20ty%2C%20sukin%20syn.)

The creature recoiled, releasing a loud growl, and she could feel it, the immense power of his mind that dwarfed hers, but at the same time, his surprise and disbelief, and the murmur of something else, something that made her sick, feeling terribly small before that creature, yet she advanced... needing to see, wanting to know what it was, feeling another presence, no... _multiple presences?_ And a smaller one…

_“What the…?”_

She needed to see... she wanted to see, but as she tried to go further, the beast shifted in front of her, growling thunderously in her head. The creature's incredulity at the intrusion of the woman was quickly replaced by a fury that pierced her defenses, and it took her breath away with an overwhelming intensity.

[ _**“STULTUM!”** _ ](https://translate.google.com/#la/en/stultum)

There was no time for retreat, as she felt and saw the power of the creature slashing her mind with pure rage, at the same time he lashed against her with his gigantic body. But before she felt his disgusting breath above her, or his huge claws scratching her skin, her whole world began to crumble, and the last thing she saw was the beast stopping suddenly, his red eyes watching her, hesitating, then retreating at an incredible speed, as the escape door of the passenger cabin opened, letting in a vestige of light which became a mere haze in the air before her eyes, while everything faded around her, and her aching mind fell into a whirlwind of confused images and sounds.

But the creature was still inside her head, and seemed determined not to let her go, though the only thing left of that hideous scene was the red orbs watching her in the shadows, and her tormented mind struggling desperately to free herself from the clutches of the beast.

She fell once more into the snow, or so she believed. Everything was cold... and the creature laughed sardonically over her, staring at her with eyes like blood, growing and covering everything in his path. The bodies of the unfortunate passengers disappeared under the weight of his shadow, and the shattered edges of her numbed mind receded at the thrust of that alien, imposing, and overwhelming consciousness. Even the bright Sun that had suddenly appeared above her head began to disappear, as the shadow continued to grow and grow, _**engulfing the world.**_

_“It was the sun, all this time ... the sun, not the moon, and for that reason it was so bright against the snow.”_

The last thing she saw was a huge ring of orange light contrasted in a sky as black as the shadow that attacked her. She managed to free herself with what was left of her strength, pushing the intrusion with an angry and piercing scream. She felt him withdraw reluctantly, seemingly tired of the resistance that offered the woman's mind, moving away to give way to the haze of her own dream.

The scene around her was of absolute darkness and a void that could only be compared to that of her own torn mind, before which she could do anything but surrender to the feeling of extreme exhaustion, and as she fell into a sea of shadows and pain, she thought for one last time, that this must be how one feels when one is _dying._


	2. 1.2 | Prelude

**Part 2**

“For God’s sake, answer the damn phone.”

The vast height of the control tower allowed him to clearly see the airstrip. Despite the darkness of the night, he could see the monstrous silhouette of the Boeing, and, at his feet, the twinkling lights aproaching, after absolute chaos had fallen around him.

His words went completely unnoticed, despite not having bothered to hide his growing panic. He tried to communicate once more, pressing the call button on the screen quickly with his cramped hand, but when he pushed the cell phone to his ear, the continuous tone of lost call made him desist.

_«Great. Now what?»_

“Bishop told us not to communicate with the outside” He ignored the nervous voice of the flight controller behind him and for five minutes he paced from one side to another in the semicircular area. The room, almost full of people who, at any other moment should have been monitoring the takeoffs and landings, now just sent orders to divert flights to nearby airports and suspend all activity in its entirety.

In spite of his growing agitation, he sat down in a vain attempt to calm his nerves, still watching through the window, the vast concrete surface, and the colossal machine which gave no signs of life.

There was a tension in the air, like the calm before the storm. An uneasy feeling that something horrible was happening in front of their eyes but nobody knew or dared to utter a word, only observing the bright screens of the computers before them.

He was desperate to know what was happening.

He returned to the screen of his cell phone, scrolling through his contacts absentmindedly and calling his superior directly to alert him of the matter. He knew that his nervous state was causing him to act irrationally, an unpleasant fear of something non-existent gave him goosebumps. He stared at the name on the bright screen, weighing the attempt to call again, despite already knowing it would be in vain.

“Any news from Bishop?” The question was barely a whisper. As he raised his head, he ran into the flight controller who had just spoken. His eyes, behind the rectangular lenses, expressed concern, and he did not seem able to control the movement of his right hand, which trembled slightly at his hip.

“I don’t think he’ll contact the Tower until he has a clear idea of what’s going on.” He sighed heavily and put the device in his pocket, grabbing his jacket from the back of the chair and standing up. “I’ll see if he needs help down there, maybe there’s already news.”

_«Maybe.»_

The controller nodded once and returned to his chair.

Considering it for a moment, he decided to leave the room, but even after he had closed the door and was approaching the stairs, he could still hear the nervous voice of the controller.

“We haven’t even received any sign from the cabin, no call or movement, everything just… turned off.  _What the hell could’ve happened?_ ” The question hung in the air, causing discomfort and uneasiness within his chest.

_«Nothing good.»_

He thought, as he opened the outer door and the cold night air hit the skin of his face. The lights of the police patrols and the CDC agency blinked around the mechanical beast that stood quietly in the middle of the runway.

_«Nothing good at all.»_

~~~

_«_ _Oh god, this is not happening… It’s not happening.»_

“[черт возьми!](https://translate.google.com/#ru/en/%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%82%20%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B7%D1%8C%D0%BC%D0%B8!)”

She spat blood into the sink, closing her eyes and curling forward, as the images swirled around her and the small room turned into a haze of strobing colors.

Her hands trembled. Her whole body trembled, covered in a fine layer of sweat that was rapidly cooling to the environment, and the thin fabric of her pajamas clung to her uncomfortably. She rubbed her face frantically fighting against the images that plagued her mind; the forest, the snow, the cabin of the plane full of corpses, and those red eyes mocking her from the dark.

_«Calm down.»_

She fought the nausea and a wave of something completely different suddenly gripped her body. All her muscles tensed, alert to an imaginary danger, and the hand that had so busily been scraping the scabs of dried blood from her skin, held the left side of her head, while her other hand went straight to the worn tiles above the wash, leaning all her weight against the wall, while struggling to control her panting.

Her heart beat with fury within her chest and the sound of the falling water was dulled by the sound of her pulse against her ears.

_«Breathe.»_

She shook her head, once… twice, still without straightening her body, feeling the water slip from her face and wet hands, but she did not open her eyes to the implacable whiteness of artificial light. She leaned her elbows on either side of the sink and bent down to take a sip of water.  _Cold as ice_ , but it did well to stop the nausea that stirred her empty stomach.

She jerked off the shirt and threw it to the floor. Her cotton pants followed, and she found herself naked and trembling in the middle of the small and cold room. Pulling back the shower curtain, she opened the hot water and entered inside quickly.

_«Fuck… cold cold…»_

Though the sensation was shocking at first, as the water began to warm up it helped soothe her convulsive body and the tension in her limbs. She usually enjoyed moments like these, when she could be alone with her thoughts and let the water fall on her body and act as a protective curtain to the outside world.  _But it was no longer the outside world which was suffocating her_.

She knelt, letting her sweat-covered hair be washed by the spray of water.

Her mind went over and over again the memories of her dream. There was no point in trying to ignore it. Running away from it would only make it worse… Whatever was happening. This time she could remember every _feeling_  and  _image_ , every sensation that had gripped her body. She hated to admit it, even inside the four walls of her apartment, with a double lock on the door… she felt vulnerable.

_«No.»_

That thing… was making her feel vulnerable.

She sighed heavily.  _No_ , she was not going to let something like that intimidate her. She needed to find an answer, not succumb to fear. She roughly untangled her matted hair with her fingers, and rinsed her soap-coated skin under the spray of water, caressing the uneven skin on her left shoulder blade.

She inhaled, thoughtfully, and closed her eyes, letting the sensation of running water overpower her senses.

Despite the fact that some scenes were harder to remember than the sensations they provoked (When she was young, she had been terrified for weeks trying to remember the reason) she could see it clearly now, remember him (him, it had been a  _him?_ ) vividly. It had pursued her, and she had tried to escape between her dreams. But… had it been like that?

Had it all been an accident to have been there? Had she sensed something and her psyche had flown freely to the cause of it? Or more terrifying … had she been dragged against her will by that  _being?_

Could that thing have the power to  _see_  her… even now?

_«Stop.»_

She turned off the shower quickly, grabbing the towel and protecting her body from the cold.

_«But what if it had all just been a bad dream?»_

_«What happens if not? Consider the possibilities, don’t run away from this fact.»_

She grabbed the damaged remains of her pajamas and walked towards her room at the end of the hallway, her hands trembled slightly as she entered the dark room, restraining the impulse to recharge herself in the doorway and stay there, without having to cross the three meters that separated her from the small lamp next to her bed. Fear.

_She was afraid._

The blood did not frighten her, neither did the darkness. Her thoughts were focused on a more frightening certainty.

The presence that had brought her out of her dream state was too real to be easily ignored, still hovering over her mind, huge and menacing, after having made its way like a battering ram against the walls of her aching consciousness.

But she not only felt fear, but  _disgust_  at how her mind had been invaded so easily. And anger towards the being who had penetrated her.

Dreams were deceptive things, but there was always a difference between the imaginary and the  _real shit._

She frowned.

_«Stop acting like an idiot.»_

Still staring at the lights on her alarm clock from the doorway, she walked a few steps and stopped abruptly, cupping her head.

_«Fuck my life.»_

She had been sick for two full weeks, and the cold that had gripped her had wreaked havoc on her body. She had missed work and had not been able to leave her apartment because of muscle pain.

Everything seemed to overwhelmed her now, the sounds, the lights… and now apparently the simple act of sleeping had become a literal nightmare.

And what if everything was just a product of fever? She had taken an aspirin for it, and  _she fucking known_  that was not very recommendable in case of nasal catarrh.

She crossed her room in three strides and turned on the lamp; the orange light illuminated the scene in front of her. She observed everything with imperturbable tranquility, and outside of her apartment the sirens and vehicles of a city that had been active while she rested were heard.

She pushed the blankets away roughly and sat on the mattress, deciding to take her cell phone already charged from the bedside table, waiting a moment for it to turn on.

When the notifications began to arrive, one of them caught her attention above it all.

_**N: Turn on the television. Airport. I can’t give much information. ******_

Wait.

_«Airport?»_

The sound of the sirens increased, passing by outside her apartment. It could be anything, whatever thing on that city, but a foreboding began to form in her chest.

She stared at the luminous screen, and a chill ran through her body.

 _«_ _[Чёрт возьм](https://translate.google.com/#ru/en/%D1%87%D1%91%D1%80%D1%82%20%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B7%D1%8C%D0%BC%D0%B8)_[и](https://translate.google.com/#ru/en/%D1%87%D1%91%D1%80%D1%82%20%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B7%D1%8C%D0%BC%D0%B8) _…_   _What was happening?»_

~~~

**_22:00 pm_ **

He passed the side of the police patrols and the CDC, which had begun to empty the cabin of the plane. Large black and rectangular bags were slowly being pulled out the escape door, and the officers, covered from head to toe in protective suits, were hauling them to one of the empty cargo areas of the airport.

At first he had watched from a distance, with his hands in his pocket, absent-mindedly playing with the outline of his cell phone. He had begun counting how many bags they were carrying from inside the cabin to the maintenance area, but with a lump in his throat he realized that it would take much longer than he had expected.

He had been working with Bishop for the past two years, monitoring the circulation of airplanes and  _souls_ , as flight controllers usually called passengers, looking for some anomaly, something that disturbed the usually busy activity inside the airport.

“You’re good at this, Nikolay,” his supervisor had once told him, when he mentioned the monotonous calm in which he was subjected day after day. “If there is someone who can detect anything in this place, it’s you. Airports are so plagued with security that only someone crazy would try to cross the  _Threshold_  under so many noses.”

“First you tell me that I’m a good agent and then you send me to work in a place with no activity? I’m really sorry, sir, I don’t want to be rude, but I think that’s a waste of time.”

The man watched him with cold blue eyes. There was no anger, but rather a calm and very subtle exasperation. He played with the fine pen he had on the table, while the young agent stood still in the middle of the office, back straight, feet slightly apart and hands clasped in front of him, resisting the urge to twist his knuckles.

“I don’t do it for wasting,  _agent.”_ The man used a different tone at the end of the sentence, and he wondered if it was to remind him of _his place_ , or perhaps a form of simple intimidation. “As I said, the security in that place is incredibly high and whoever wants to enter using this route would have to be very dangerous and damn mad.”

Nikolay observed the old agent sitting behind his desk, doing his best to avoid his blue eyes. He knew where the conversation was going on.

“Forget about the underworld and the gangs that roam the edge of society and that you considered a pain in the ass during training. You know perfectly well what kind of madness I’m talking about, agent.”

His boss drilled him, scrutinizing his reaction. Nikolay thought about replying, but closed his mouth and nodded solemnly, fully understanding the implication after the last question.

He left the office without saying another word.

Choosing between working in the New York sub-world, as he had done since the beginning, to monitoring for anomalies at the country’s largest airport, he had chosen the latter, both for the smell and the possibility of participating in something relatively new, since the operations at the airport had been approved only five years earlier.

He did not love his work, but in one way or another, it was necessary.

For months he had been anxious, waiting for something,  _anything_ , to break up the monotony of his work, and now that it was happening in front of his eyes, he never expected to feel so damned guilty about it all.

He never expected that 200 people would have to die for it.

_«What the hell happened here?»_

A feeling of helplessness began to grow inside him. It was a cold and paralyzing feeling, just witnessing and not being able to do anything about it.

_«Anything could’ve happened. A terrorist attack or even a human error? Maybe cabin decompression?»_

_«Bishop. I have to find Bishop.»_

Bishop was there to inform him of any anomalies he heard or observed. If it was an epidemic, terrorist attack, or even a failure of the plane itself, the relevant authorities would take care of the problem, and for them, it would just be a false alarm.

But as an agent, he needed be prepared to act only if it was necessary.

He briskly walked to the nearest cargo section, watching from a distance as the flight operators and other officials emptied the cargo compartment of the plane. The wind beat against his face and body incessantly, and the noise of the sirens in the distance mingled with those of his heartbeat. He did not see Bishop among the black silhouettes going in and out of the cargo section, so he assumed that the man was already inside the cargo terminal.

The whole scene felt like something out of a horror movie. He walked quickly in the darkness of the night, listening to his footsteps against the concrete of the runway. It was almost the new moon, and only the artificial lights of whitish and orange color illuminated his way, but in some sections the darkness seemed to throb like a living creature.

The wind at JFK airport was relentless… it never stopped. It bombarded his face in all directions, bringing to his nostrils the salty air of the Atlantic coast, the scent of the damp earth, the dust that accumulated over the entire length of the runway, and a strange, penetrating auroma. It was nauseating and made him frown, losing his train of thought.

He stopped abruptly, grimacing at the wind that lifted a cloud of dust around him, stinging his eyes. He shook his head for a moment, in a vain attempt to clear his mind. He inhaled, once, then twice, filling his nostrils with the various scents, trying to capture the unknown smell that had disturbed him.

The wind whipped his hair again and he shielded his head with his jacket hood. This time the wind blew from the west with unusual warmth, but there was nothing unusual about it, other than the smell of fuel and dust that it left on clothes and skin.

A chill ran down his neck and ruffled his hair under the waterproof hood. Suddenly he felt overwhelmed and exposed to an invisible presence hiding in plain sight.

 _He was not afraid_. That was not what he felt. But rather, it was an uncomfortable sensation within his body and the hairs on his arms began to bristle. His senses were alert to any sign of danger; his hearing sharpened, trying to perceive every noise in the wide expanse of concrete, without capturing anything unusual. He resumed the march, walking faster and faster as he approached the cargo terminal, leaving the plane stopped in the middle of Terminal 4 like a sleeping beast whose passengers were eaten as victims of _its hunger._

The shift supervisor, a stout man holding a notebook in his gnarled hands, looked up as he approached. Under the artificial lights, the shadows on his pale skin deepened the wrinkles on his forehead, giving his face a gargoyle appearance.

He smiled a little, knowing that maybe it was  _not just appearence._

“David.”

Nikolay nodded as he passed by, crossing the large metal doors that opened outward like a wide, black mouth.

David Ivanov. It was not his real name, of course, but while he had been working there, everyone knew him as  _David,_  and he had gotten used to it. It was like a second skin which concealed its true form in the eyes of others, a simple detail that came with the protocol of his work, but in spite of that, he was grateful.

He almost stumbled over a small suitcase that had been left at the entrance hold, but managed to stabilize himself and enter in a hurry. The interior was flooded with orange lights that hurt his eyes, which were accustomed to the night. Workers came and went with luggage belonging to the victims, sorting each briefcase, each box, bag, and utensil, labeling everything. They worked in silence, prey to a feeling of uneasiness that overwhelmed their ability to think. A state that the young man shared.

He looked around the great vault, from the entrance, finding the huge structure of metal and aluminum, whose roof was lost rising above his head meters and meters into the darkness. It was composed of huge corridors divided into sections with dozens or maybe hundreds of things accumulated throughout the years.

Much of it was just silhouettes blurred by the shadows that the lights could not penetrate, and Nikolay walked directly towards a group of workers gathered in the middle of the main entrance, which connected the long corridors.

Upon arriving, frustration fell into his shoulders.

“Where is Bishop?” The young supervisor in charge jumped to hear the sharp tone of his voice, and Nikolay did everything possible to show a patient face. He had been carefully calm, but now his annoyance overflowed and he needed all his self-control not to use it against the workers in front of him.

_«Calm down, don’t get upset about something you can’t solve.»_

He thought, as he breathed in rhythm, controlling the anguish that had begun to form inside his chest.

_«It can be anything. People die every day.»_

He was thinking about the plane, but nausea rose in his chest at that last thought.

He forced himself to think coldly, even though the strange feeling of guilt returned to play with his emotions, but it was reasonable and he should not feel sorry for this. The number of victims had already been estimated. The danger had already passed, and the relevant authorities were going to find the cause of such an unfortunate incident in a matter of hours.

Right?

_«Nobody else needed to die.»_

“Eh … I don’t really know. He was here a few minutes ago, talking to Regis Airlines. He was a little dismayed by piece that wasn’t listed on the manifesto.” He handed the luggage list to Nikolay and ventured into one of the unloading areas.

That uneasy feeling returned, but he pushed it away from his mind with the same reasoning he had used before. There was no time to get upset or show sadness about what had happened. He followed the man down a long corridor crammed with boxes and suitcases, the manifest of the plane under his arm and his heart beat uncontrollably in his chest.

The first thing he thought when he saw it, was that it was beautiful.

 _Terribly beautiful,_  in a macabrely appealing way. The drawings carved in the old well-preserved wood denoted a care and detail that only the hands of an avid sculptor could create.

But the appreciation was quickly overshadowed by the horrible and almost palpable sensation of a danger that drowned any attempt to calm his inner being.

Inexplicably, his first impulse was to walk around the enormous rectangular object, breathing in the faint smell of earth and something more acidic, almost undetectable to all but him, but unpleasant to his senses.

He still did not dare to touch the polished surface of wood, even though his gray eyes were sailing over the arabesques and dismal skeletal figures that covered what, in his opinion, was a work of art. He took a step forward, glancing around at the deadly-looking skeletons that stared back at him with dark, empty sockets.

Eventually, he stroked with the tips of his fingers over the smooth texture of one of the skulls, carefully following the opening line of the gates. His arm tensed at a sudden impulsive thought. Finally, with one last look, he stepped back and put his hands in his pockets, letting himself be carried away by the furious pounding of his pulse against his eardrums.

He did not hear what the supervisor was saying beside him as he explained the conjectures of the origin of the box, his head was a whirlwind of plans of action, numbers he would have to call, strategies he would have to use, but a single thought returned again and again to emerge in front of all the others, overshadowing his forced logic with a perpetual panic.

It was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, however, when he touched its surface, he felt a visceral urge to break the thick lid finely decorated with his own hands and beat the hard wood beautifully carved, splintering the closed gates until the thing was unusable to anybody or  _anything._

He knew he could do it.

_« **Calm down** »_

“Are you okay?”

“It’s beautiful.”

The supervisor frowned a moment, looking back at the coffin in front of them. “Yeah, I guess so. In a creepy way.”

“Yeah..” He played with the cell phone in his pocket, thinking over and over again of his desperate attempt to call a certain person on the contact list earlier in the night. “But it’s beautiful, in a strange and twisted way. We can not deny that [there is beauty in the grotesque.”](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Guillermo_del_Toro)

He could not take his eyes off the huge object and its hypnotizing affect, so he forced himself to look at the manifesto, as he swallowed a wave of nausea from the unpleasant odor coming from its slits.

Such an object should not have gone unnoticed in customs, unless someone had wanted it that way. The coffin had to be more than nine feet long, four feet wide, and three feet high. He was only five ten, and if it were standing vertically, it would rise above his own head, offering a threatening and frankly intimidating vision. He could not imagine what kind of  _being_  might need the use of such a huge object.

_«I would not venture to create such risky conjectures, Watson.»_

“Bishop was trying to contact the airline in Berlin He wanted to find out if it had been registered in the manifest before leaving Germany.”

“Did Bishop tell you where he was going before he disappeared?” He handed him the list after a quick check. In it there were only records of wholesale shipments of mundane things, medicines, condoms… nothing that made mention of a gigantic Gothic coffin.

“He didn’t say anything, but I saw him head towards the packaging section. To the west wing. He probably wanted to talk to the airline away from all the hustle … hey!”

As he spoke, Nikolay had once again approached the sinister coffin, holding the doors with both hands and unceremoniously opening one of them. He  _needed_  to see.

The smell was incredibly strong, and he pursed his nose at the stinging in his eyes, but the supervisor did not seem affected by it.

“Dirt?”

“Yeah … weird, right?”

He was agitated, and could no longer hide it. He observed the damp and smelly earth, hoping that maybe it would give him the answer he was looking for, while his mind cataloged every detail he saw.

He examined the hatch carefully, stroking the wooden edge and the hinges, careful not to touch the earth inside, until he found what he wanted. He listened to the supervisor’s steps behind him, approaching cautiously.

“We think it belongs to the antiques trade for collectors. We have one or two of these cases a week.”

His fingers played with the internal bolt, observing the wood worn around him, and the colorless marks on the inside of the door.

Then he examined the dirt. Black and damp, it smelled even worse up close, but he could not see anything else in it. There were no pieces of grass or even pebbles. It was completely clean of any impurity, but it was not until he lit his blackness with his portable flashlight that he saw  _it_.

Holding his breath as he watched the movement in the light, nearly imperceptible, undulating. The little creature glistened as it rose to the surface, to re-enter its damp, blackish hiding place, fleeing from his light.

When the man behind him approached, Nikolay had to grab his hand before he touched the inside.

“It’s just dirt.” The man said, pulling away with a frown.

“We don’t know what else it contains. It’s better to wait for the analysis from the CDC.” He swallowed, turned off the flashlight, and carefully closed the coffin, wiping his sweaty hands on the leg of his pants. He stepped back and looked at the box once more.

“What do you think it is?” The supervisor had watched Nikolay’s face as he inspected the object, and at this moment the man looked sick under the artificial lights of the vault.

“Just a collector’s item.” Nikolay lied, without looking at the man. He tried to regulate his breathing and the growing feeling of panic.

“It will be a damn long night then.”

“Mmmhmm.” He breathed, once, twice, feeling the nausea seize his stomach one more time.

“Hey, Dave, you really feeling ok?” The supervisor had noticed the paleness of his face, and the sweat that had begun to permeate his forehead. He nodded, taking a moment to calm down.

He was about to turn around and abandon the strange object, but a thought crossed his mind. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and watched the supervisor with a smile.

“May l?”

“Bishop doesn’t want the press to know anything about this.” He said but didn’t dare to stop Nikolay. They had been there for a while and their concern for everything that had happened was taking its toll on the mental state of each and every one of them. The worst thing that could happen was that the journalists believed they were concealing something pertinent to the plane, when possibly both events had no relation at all.

“I’m going to need a reference to investigate possible traffic, trust me.” He began photographing each angle of the object quickly. He knew that Bishop worked faithfully in adherence to protocol, one of the many reasons for his longevity in office and his good reputation, both at the airport and the agency where they both worked. One of the hardest rules was not to spread to the public anything about the investigations being carried out.

But he did not have to know about it, and neither did the press, or even the Agency.

The photos were not intended for them.

“Where did you say Bishop went again?”

“Packaging section. The area isn’t in use at the moment. All of the workers are in the first area.”

He turned to the man, who looked downcast and pensive, watching the huge coffin in front of him. Nikolay approached slowly, swallowing when thinking about what he intended to do next. He placed a hand on his shoulder carefully, making him look into his eyes.

“Thank you. Go take a break. Have a coffee and eat something, I’ll find Bishop on my own.”

The man seemed confused first, hesitating at the strange idea given by the young agent. An instant later his face seemed to relax, and he blinked and nodded slowly, without leaving Nikolay’s gaze.

“Yeah… I think I’ll do that.”

Nikolay squeezed the man’s shoulder giving him a final smile before leaving him, walking as quickly as he had arrived, still with his cell phone on the hand, and with the adrenaline running in his veins.

The vision of the strange white worm was still etched in his mind, as well as the internal hinges and the black, damp earth with the nauseating odor. He walked by the side of some workers quickly. When two police officers appeared in his field of vision, he returned his cell phone in his pocket.

The packing area was the furthest, and therefore the most isolated. It usually had more activity during the day, but there was a section only accessible by authorized personnel, where the largest objects were prepared for international flights.

He crossed the central area without looking anyone in the eye. After a year of work almost all the airport officials knew those in the control area and he did not need to show his identification, but still he did not want them to interrupt his snooping.

It had always been easier for him to identify the different aromas, and he took a deep breath, letting the plastic scent of suitcases fill his nostrils; the odor of glue from the packaging tapes and the aroma of naphthalene were the most common in that place.

The smells of the people around him came later, and as always, it was a blow to his senses. He wrinkled his nose when faced with rancid sweat; it was not much worse than the smell from the coffin he had inspected earlier, he told himself gravely, as he cataloged the people around him.

_«Artificial bamboo. That stupid fragrance that he always uses and has recommended me so many times»_

This part was not easy, but it was not impossible.

_«There you are.»_

He followed the trail quickly, and frowned again when he saw that it led to an area completely isolated from the hustle and bustle of the central area. He slowed his steps, taking care not to make noise at the possibility of encountering something unexpected.

_«Breathe, slowly.»_

A last gust of wind whipped the air around him, running through the storage corridors, drawing odors from the farthest places of the huge place full of things straight to his nose, he stopped abruptly.

He could hear the distant voices only fifty meters from where he was standing, turned off by the huge corridors and swallowed by the darkness of the vault. He took a deep breath, refusing to believe what he had picked up, and started walking slowly, toward the entrance to the packaging sector.

The light was a dim, sickly green, and shadows dominated the deserted place. Anything could be hiding in that place, he thought, so he kept a distance from the center of the corridor, walking carefully behind the boxes, and making no noise.

He assured himself that there was nothing there, but the beautifully adorned coffin kept coming back again and again to seize his mind. The coffin and its damp, nauseating dirt. Then, there was the white worm fleeing from the light. He questioned if his actions were the best. Should he call the Agency and warn them about what was happening?

But nothing had ever happened in this place before. Nothing that made one suspect that they would use an airplane for such purposes, under the eyes of hundreds of people. Was he too naive to expect positive results, after everything he had seen. Everything he had heard?

_You know perfectly well what kind of madness I am talking about, agent._

_She would know,_  of course. She would always tell him and throw it in his face in the most unfortunate moments. When logic and reasoning were essential to act, not emotionality and false hopes.

Even so, and with all his hopes that things would turn out well in the morning, that everyone would finish their work without incident and that the officers and the government will solve the cause of the tragic end of Regis Airs passengers, he kept hidden between the boxes and the wide, dark corridors, observing and listening attentively to any movement strange.

He forced himself to think, with all his training, that what he had previously smelled was  _not blood._

But, as he moved, the smell became more unpleasant, and it mixed with iron.

Iron.  _It was too strong._

_«Do you have any idea what you’re looking for?!»_

He had not noticed the soft purr yet. He had been focused on tracking the scent of the missing man. He did notice the strong smell, wrapping him like a shroud, bringing with it a horrible sense of imminent danger.

It was ammonia. This entire time, the smell had been ammonia.

He gave no sign of fear. He remained calm, and just as he had been trained, he dipped his hand inside his jacket stealthily, and wrapped his fingers around his service weapon.

Flickering red glow appeared in his peripheral vision, followed by a low growl from the darkness to his right. And he jumped, but not because of the suddenness of its appearance, but because of the incredible height of it.

 _Threatening_  and _intimidating._

And then his cell phone began to ring from within his pocket.

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to my beta reader [Essenceanddescent](http://archiveofourown.org/users/essenceanddescent/pseuds/essenceanddescent) for helping me edit my english translation. Your fanfic is incredible and your friendship a blessing! (´・ω・`)


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